The Pianist
From a nocturne cut off by bombing, through a ballade in the ruins, and back to a polonaise on the concert stage, the film's music tells us what one man refused, to the very end, to let go of.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people behind it ⏳🌊
- ComposerWojciech Kilar
A product of the Polish avant-garde generation, he set restrained cues beside Chopin in his third collaboration with Polanski.
- DirectorRoman Polanski
A director who survived the Kraków ghetto as a child, he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Director for this film.
- ScreenplayRonald Harwood
He adapted Szpilman's memoir and won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
- Lead roleAdrien Brody
He practiced the piano for months to play Szpilman, and the role won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.
- Lead roleThomas Kretschmann
He played Wilm Hosenfeld, the German officer who hears Szpilman's ballade amid the ruins.
I. Chopin's film, Kilar's place
(Source) “The Pianist” is Roman Polanski's film of the memoir by Władysław Szpilman, the Polish pianist and composer. Polanski himself had survived the Kraków ghetto as a child. The mere fact that he was the one filming a story of the Warsaw ghetto gave the film a weight all its own. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2002, and Adrien Brody, who played Szpilman, won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role. (Composer) The score was entrusted to Wojciech Kilar. Born in Lwów in 1932 and based in Katowice for most of his life, he was, in the 1960s, one of the composers who led the Polish avant-garde alongside Górecki and Penderecki. Later he set experimental techniques aside in search of a simple, deep resonance. He wrote music for some hundred Polish films, among them works by Wajda, Kieślowski and Zanussi, and won international renown with Coppola's “Dracula.” This was his third collaboration with Polanski, after “Death and the Maiden” and “The Ninth Gate.” (Restraint) Yet there is very little of Kilar's music in this film. At its center stands Chopin, and Kilar confined himself to setting a few short cues at his side. Of the 12 tracks on the soundtrack album, only one bears his name. Because the hero is a pianist, the music he plays, or hears in his head, had to become the music of the film. (Performance) The Chopin is played by the Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak. Brody practiced the piano for months so that his playing on screen would look natural, and in the close-ups it is Olejniczak's hands we see. The music won the 2003 César Award for Best Music. (Lineage) “Ray,” “Walk the Line” and “La Vie en Rose,” discussed earlier in this series, also portrayed the lives of real musicians. If the music of those films followed glory and downfall on the stage, the music of this one follows the time in which a man robbed of his stage survives.
II. The nocturne at the radio station
(Opening) The film opens on black-and-white documentary footage of Warsaw in 1939. Over it a single piano sings quietly, and the picture moves to a studio of Polish Radio. Szpilman is playing Chopin's “Nocturne in C-sharp minor” live on air. (Interruption) As he plays, artillery rumbles in the distance. Beyond the glass the engineer looks uneasy, but Szpilman does not lift his hands from the keys. Then a bomb strikes the building, and the music breaks off in the roar. What the film shows us in its first scene is a moment in which a piece cannot be played to the end. (Choice of piece) Chopin wrote this nocturne at about twenty and never published it in his lifetime. It is not showy; it flows along in a low voice, as if talking to itself. The nocturne was in fact on the program the real Szpilman played in the station's last live broadcast, on September 23, 1939. The film borrows that fact almost unchanged. (Everyday life) Even after the bombing, ordinary life goes on for a while. Szpilman's family eats dinner rejoicing at the radio news that Britain and France have entered the war. But as German troops enter the city and decrees come down one after another, among them one forcing Jews to wear armbands, that ordinary life slowly narrows. The piano remains in the apartment, but the places and hours in which he can play it steadily dwindle. (Foreshadowing) The interrupted nocturne lingers until the end of the film like an unfinished sentence. The audience enters the long story without knowing when, or in what form, the piece will be heard again.
The piece that opens the film, the piece cut off by the bombing, and the piece played again in the same studio after the war.
- The left hand lays down an even flow of broken chords (arpeggios), unfolding the harmony one note at a time, while above it the right hand sings like a human voice. In the opening scene this quiet flow is set side by side with the sound of artillery.
- In the middle section a melody from Chopin's own Piano Concerto No. 2 briefly glimmers through. Heard alongside the fact that a twenty-year-old wrote it before leaving his homeland, the piece sounds like music that carries a farewell within it.
- Chopin never published it in his lifetime; it came to light only after his death. It is a piece expressed less through dazzling technique than through a breath that gently holds back and presses forward the tempo, so interpretations vary widely from pianist to pianist.
- The real Szpilman played this piece in his last broadcast in 1939, and he is said to have chosen it again when broadcasting resumed in 1945. By placing it at the beginning and the end, the film gives the same melody an entirely different meaning.
III. The road to the ghetto
(Relocation) The date October 31, 1940 appears on screen. The Jews of Warsaw must move into a district set apart within the city, that is, the ghetto. Szpilman's family, too, packs up their belongings and walks in the long procession. Over this passage plays Kilar's cue “Moving to the Ghetto, October 31, 1940.” (Clarinet) The piece lasts less than 2 minutes. A single clarinet leads the melody, with the strings supporting it from behind. It is steeped in the idiom of klezmer, the folk music of Eastern Europe's Jewish communities, and so it tells us in sound who the people in the scene are and where they come from. Yet it sounds not like music for a celebration but like music for people leaving. (Ghetto) Life inside the walls is filled with hunger and humiliation. Szpilman feeds his family by playing piano in a café in the ghetto, but the customers listen more closely to the clink of coins than to his playing. In the streets a child is beaten as he squeezes out under the wall, and an old man collapses. Here the piano is less an art than a means of survival. (Parting) In the summer of 1942 the people of the ghetto are driven to a square called the Umschlagplatz and loaded onto freight trains. Szpilman's family gathers in that square too. There Szpilman alone is pulled away and does not board the train. The film uses almost no music in this scene. The screech of the train, the murmur of the crowd and the footsteps of the man left alone fill the space instead. (Silence) Here it becomes clear why Kilar wrote so little music for this film. With no melody to guide its emotions, the audience must face the scene exactly as it is.
Music for the day Jewish families carry their belongings into the ghetto, and the only original composition by Kilar on the album.
- The clarinet leads the melody. It was a beloved instrument in klezmer, the folk music of Eastern European Jews, and the choice of this instrument alone tells us who the people in the procession are.
- The clarinet's manner of speech, gliding between notes and bending them lightly, sounds closer to sobbing than to singing.
- The strings do not step forward but hold up the floor from low beneath. Kilar's restraint, his refusal to inflate the emotion, shows itself even in a piece under 2 minutes long.
- On the album the piece is played by the clarinetist Hanna Wolczedska.
IV. Soundless keys
(Hiding) Having escaped the ghetto, Szpilman hides in an apartment in the non-Jewish quarter beyond the wall, a room secretly arranged by former colleagues. He must swallow even his coughs so the neighbors won't notice. From this chapter on, the film's protagonist is, in effect, sound. A knock at the door, footsteps climbing the stairs, the voices of neighbors through the wall: all of them become threats. (Piano) In the second hiding place there is a piano. Facing a keyboard for the first time in a long while, Szpilman opens the lid and raises his hands, but does not press the keys. His fingers move in the air just above them. At that moment Chopin's Op. 22 plays on the soundtrack. The music sounds only in his head, and only the audience hears it with him. (Inner world) This scene shows better than any other how the film handles music. The boundary between sound actually heard within the frame and sound that rings only in a character's head disappears. For someone who cannot make a sound, music becomes something to be guarded in memory. While he plays, Szpilman's rigid face relaxes for a moment. (Uprising) In the spring of 1943 an uprising breaks out in the ghetto, and Szpilman watches it through a window. The following year all of Warsaw rises, and the city burns. When even the building where he is hiding is shelled, he is left wandering through the ruins. (Isolation) Wracked by hunger and illness, he finally takes refuge in the attic of an empty house in the middle of the ruined city. There is no one outside, and almost no music. All he hears is the wind and the sound of bricks falling from crumbling walls. This long silence prepares the way for the piano that will sound in the next chapter.
The music that reaches Szpilman's ears as evening falls over ruined Warsaw, near the end of his time in hiding. It is striking that it is Beethoven, not Chopin.
- Triplets, notes grouped in threes, carry on at the same pace from beginning to end. This unbroken flow, free of dynamic swells, merges with the silence of the ruins and makes time seem to stand still.
- One of the few piano pieces in the film that Szpilman does not play himself. Because it comes as someone's playing from offscreen, the sound conveys the situation of a man in hiding, groping with his ears for signs of life outside.
- Beethoven, the emblem of German-language music, resounds in a ruined Polish city. One critic wrote that, set against the brutality of the preceding two hours, this music sounds strangely mournful.
V. Ballade in the ruins
(The can) A single can of pickles found in the kitchen of an empty house is all Szpilman has left. Searching for something to open it with, he drops the can on the floor, and when he looks up, a German officer is standing there. The officer asks who he is and what he does. Szpilman answers that he was a pianist. (Performance) The officer leads him to the piano in the next room. Hands that have not properly pressed a key in years hesitate at first. Then Chopin's “Ballade No. 1 in G minor” rings out. In the moonlight coming through the window, the officer listens in silence. (Choice of piece) Here the film parted ways with the memoir. The piece the real Szpilman played for the officer was the nocturne from the opening scene. The film changed it to the ballade. The ballade begins with a slow introduction, grows steadily, and in the end sweeps along like a raging storm. As a sound bursting out after a long silence, it seems to pour out at once everything he has swallowed all this time. (Humanity) One critic wrote of this choice that the music of a man struggling to hold on to his humanity suited the moment better than a nocturne looking back on bygone days. In this reading, it is not a piece that flaunts patriotism but one that shows the strength by which a single person has endured. (Stillness) The silence after the playing ends is also part of the scene. For a while, with no music at all, the film shows only the two men's faces as we wait to learn what the officer will decide. The music passes no verdict in this moment. It simply proves who this man is, to the officer and to the audience. What happens next is left for you to discover in the theater.
The piece for the scene in which Szpilman, confronted by a German officer in an empty house, presses the keys for the first time in years. In the actual memoir it was the nocturne; the film changed it.
- It begins with a slow introduction in which both hands play the same melody together. Ending as if asking a question, this introduction echoes the hesitation of someone back at the piano after a long absence, choosing a first note.
- The first theme that follows carries a dance meter, but being in a minor key it is forlorn. The way this theme changes shape and returns as the piece unfolds seems to tell a story, hence the name ballade.
- The final section, the coda, storms along fast and fierce. It sounds like a choice made for the scene in which a man who has swallowed his sound for years at last lets it out freely.
- In the film the original, a little over 9 minutes long, is cut down to fit the scene. The album includes the complete piece as played by Olejniczak.
VI. The piano sounds again
(Return) The war is over, and Szpilman sits once more in a studio of Polish Radio. It is the same place as in the opening scene, before the same piano. The piece he plays is the “Nocturne in C-sharp minor” that the bombing cut short. The real Szpilman, too, is said to have opened the first broadcast with this piece when the station reopened in 1945. (Symmetry) In this way the film binds its beginning and its end with the same music. Yet the same melody does not sound as it did at first. If the nocturne in the opening scene was a peace about to shatter, the final nocturne is the sound of confirming what remains after everything has been lost. The view of the studio beyond the glass is much the same, but in between, a family, a city and countless people have vanished. (Afterglow) Before the return, the film goes back once more to the officer's story. Here the music all but withdraws. What happened is best seen for yourself. I will only note that the brief silence in which the music says nothing is one of the moments that weighs most heavily in the whole film. (Stage) In the last scene Szpilman takes the stage of a large concert hall. Wearing tails, he plays Chopin's “Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante” with an orchestra. The music he could play in hiding only on keys made of air now fills the hall as sound that everyone can hear. (End) The polonaise continues as the end credits roll. The film ends neither in sorrow nor in a proclamation of triumph. It ends with a pianist playing a piece through to the end. There, a reply is set down to the music that could not be played to the end in the first scene.
Op. 22, which Szpilman played in hiding only in his head, fingers hovering in the air, resounds onstage with an orchestra in the final scene.
- Op. 22 is in two parts. The Andante spianato at the start is a calmly unfolding piano solo, and the Grande Polonaise that follows is a brilliant dance joined by the orchestra. With this single work the film links soundless hiding to the return to the stage.
- Spianato is Italian for smoothed or leveled. Over an accompaniment that flows evenly like ripples, the melody sings.
- The polonaise is a stately, processional dance of the Polish nobility. Its rhythm, leaning hard on the second beat, sounds like a dignified stride, and at the end of the film it merges with the image of a man who has regained his dignity.
- On the album, Olejniczak performs with the Warsaw Philharmonic under the baton of Tadeusz Strugała.
The album's final track is a 1948 recording of Szpilman himself. It is the only track on which you can hear the touch of the real man behind the film's hero.
- The mazurka is a dance in triple meter born in the Polish countryside. It has a distinctive step, with the weight falling on the second or third beat.
- The piece begins and ends on harmonies that drift without settling in any key. Its close, fading away without ever resolving, leaves a lonely echo behind.
- This performance was recorded three years after he survived the war. Beyond the hiss of an old recording, you can hear how the man the film portrays actually played the piano.
Lesser-known stories
The music in the film's most famous performance scene departs from the facts. According to Szpilman's memoir, the piece he played for Captain Hosenfeld was the "Nocturne in C-sharp minor." He had played the same piece in the radio station's last live broadcast in 1939, and in 1945, when broadcasting resumed, he chose it again. In his real life, a single piece bound together the beginning, the middle and the end. The film changed only the middle into a ballade. The memoir first appeared in Poland in 1946, under the title "Death of a City." But the book soon vanished from the shops. The usual explanation is that it did not fit the history promoted by the postwar Communist regime, because it unflinchingly described Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and even Jews who collaborated with the Nazis. The book saw daylight again only half a century later. A German edition came out in 1998, followed by an English one, and the story became known around the world. Without this republication, the film could never have been made. The republished edition included excerpts from Hosenfeld's diary. In it he recorded the anger and incomprehension he felt watching what was happening in the occupied territories. Where the film shows him only briefly, the diary reveals the inner life of a German officer in far greater detail. The last track on the soundtrack album, the Mazurka in A minor, is played not by Olejniczak but by Szpilman himself, in a 1948 recording. The liner notes offer no separate explanation, so it is easy to pass over, yet it is the track that holds the real sound of the man the film portrays. Moreover, of the Chopin pieces Olejniczak plays, only three were newly recorded for the film. The rest were taken from performances he had recorded in 1991 and 1994.
Glossary 📚🔎
Nocturne (yasanggok)
(Meaning) Yasanggok ('night-thought piece', 夜想曲) means a piece (曲) holding the thoughts (想) that come at night (夜). Its Western name, nocturne, likewise comes from nox, the Latin word for night. (In film·musical scores) A quiet piano piece in which the left hand lays down a gentle accompaniment while the right hand sings the melody. In film it often accompanies peaceful daily life or moments of solitary reflection. Think of a soft song you listen to through earphones, lying in bed with the lights off. In this film, that stillness collides with the bombing and is shattered.
Ballade (instrumental ballade)
(Meaning) Ballade comes from the Latin ballare, meaning to dance, and originally referred to a song that told a story. (In film·musical scores) Chopin was the first to give this name to a piano piece without words. There are no words, yet it unfolds like a story, with a beginning, a conflict, a climax and an ending. Just as a friend telling a scary story starts out in a hush and then suddenly shouts at the end, Ballade No. 1 begins slowly and ends in a storm. (Elsewhere) In popular music, ballad more often refers to a slow, sentimental love song.
Polonaise
(Meaning) French for 'Polish-style.' A Polish dance came to bear a French name because, when the dance spread through the courts of Europe, French was the common language of the aristocracy. (In film·musical scores) A processional dance of the Polish nobility, in triple meter yet with a stately, striding feel. Through this dance Chopin expressed the pride of his Polish homeland. Think of the music that suits a graduation or the opening parade of a sports day, when everyone marches in proudly in step. In this film, it carries the final scene's moment of regained dignity.
Klezmer
(Meaning) A word formed from the Hebrew klei, meaning instrument, and zemer, meaning song: a singing instrument. (In film·musical scores) The folk music played at weddings and celebrations in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. Its hallmark is the way the clarinet and violin bend and slide their notes like a human voice laughing or crying. When a film speaks in klezmer's accent, the audience knows at once that the people on screen belong to a Jewish community. It's like knowing your class is about to appear at the school festival the moment you hear your class's cheer song.
On-screen music (diegetic music)
(Meaning) Diegesis is Greek for 'storytelling.' In film theory, it refers to the world of the story in which the characters live. (In film·musical scores) Music the characters can hear too: music someone plays on screen or that comes from a radio. It is distinct from background music, which only the audience hears. In a video game, the music playing in a shop your character walks into is on-screen music, while the grim music beneath a battle scene is background music. In "The Pianist," nearly all the music is on-screen music. Yet the scene in the hideout where he plays an imaginary keyboard in the air blurs that line, since the sound rings only inside his head.
Broken chord (arpeggio)
(Meaning) Arpeggio comes from the Italian arpa, meaning harp. It means sounding a chord one note at a time, as if plucking a harp. (In film·musical scores) Instead of pressing C·E·G all at once, you spread them out and play them one by one: C, E, G. It makes the sound flow like ripples. Think of holding a chord on the guitar and plucking the strings one at a time. The left-hand accompaniment of a nocturne and the triplets of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata are both played this way.
Coda
(Meaning) Italian for 'tail.' It means the tail section added after the main body of a piece has ended. (In film·musical scores) The final section that brings a piece to a close, where what came before is summed up or the most intense climax erupts. The coda of Chopin's Ballade No. 1 is so fast and difficult that pianists count it among the passages they dread most. It's like the last straightaway before the finish line in a race, where you pour everything into an all-out sprint.